5.4 Findings
5.5.1 ICT Infrastructure
5.5.1.1 Mobile Phone/Mobile Device Ownership
The research findings show that mobile phone ownership amongst students and academic staff was very high with many of them owning one or more devices. Findings shown in Figure 5.3 indicate that 315 (99.7%) students owned a mobile phone whilst only 1 (0.3%) indicated that he or she did not own a mobile phone. Whereas 215 (68.5%) students indicated that they owned only one mobile phone, a significant part of the student body 90 (28.7%) indicated that they owned two mobile phones. Still more, 7 (2.2%) students indicated that they owned three mobile phones and only 2 (0.6%) students pointed out that they owned more than three mobile phones. These findings imply that much as single ownership of mobile phone was prevalent, dual and multiple ownership was increasingly becoming a trend.
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Figure 5. 3: Mobile Phone Ownership among Students (N=314) Source: Survey data, 2016
An analysis of the responses given by academic staff indicate that all of them (224, 100%) owned a mobile phone translating into a 100% ownership rate. Moreover, 102 (45.5%) academic staff owned only one mobile phone whilst 122 (54.5%) owned two or more mobile phones. These findings show that besides having a higher ownership rate, academic staff also owned more mobile phones when compared to students. These findings are shown in Figure 5.4.
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Figure 5. 4: Mobile Phone Ownership among Academic Staff (N=224) Source: Survey data, 2016
Data captured in Table 5.5 indicate that 100 (24.6%) students owned Nokia mobile phone whilst 83 (20.4%) students owned Samsung mobile phone. This means that the two phones were the most pervasive mobile phones amongst students in public universities in Malawi as they accounted for 183 (45%) ownership rate amongst students which was close to half of entire mobile phone ownership amongst this group. However, ZTE 40 (9.8%) ownership rate, Huawei 33 (8.1%) ownership rate and Blackberry 31 (7.6%) ownership rate were the other pervasive mobile phones amongst students. On the contrary, Alcatel 7 (1.7%), HTC 6 (1.5) and TECNO 1 (0.2%) were not very pervasive.
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Table 5. 5: Types of Mobile Phones that Students Owned (N=407)
Source: Survey data, 2016
Findings on mobile phone ownership for academic staff have also indicated that Nokia 70 (20.1%) ownership rate and Samsung 92 (26.4%) ownership rate were the most pervasive mobile phones amongst academic staff in public universities in Malawi. The two phones accounted for 162 (46.5%) ownership rate amongst academic staff, which was close to half of entire mobile phone ownership. However, other phones not listed in Table 5.6, 38 (10.9%) Type of mobile phone Frequency Percentage
Nokia 100 24.6
Samsung 83 20.4
IPhone 8 2.0
Alcatel 7 1.7
HTC 6 1.5
Sony 11 2.7
LG 10 2.5
Huawei 33 8.1
Windows Phone 23 5.7
Blackberry 31 7.6
Itel 19 4.7
Motorola 13 3.2
ZTE 40 9.8
TECNO 1 .2
Other 22 5.4
Total 407 100.0
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ownership rate, ZTE 24 (6.9%) ownership rate, Itel 23 (6.6%) ownership rate, Blackberry 20 (5.7%) ownership rate, and iPhone 19 (5.5%) ownership rate were the other pervasive mobile phones amongst academic staff. Similar to students, Alcatel 2 (0.6%) and TECNO 1 (0.3%) phones were discovered not to be very pervasive amongst academic staff. On the contrary, HTC phones 12 (3.4%) had slightly higher ownership rate amongst academic staff than students.
Table 5. 6: Types of Mobile Phones that Academic Staff Owned (N=348)
Source: Survey data, 2016
Type of mobile phone Frequency Percentage
Nokia 70 20.1
Samsung 92 26.4
IPhone 19 5.5
Alcatel 2 0.6
HTC 12 3.4
Sony 5 1.4
LG 6 1.7
Huawei 14 4.0
Windows Phone 14 4.0
Blackberry 20 5.7
Itel 23 6.6
Motorola 8 2.3
ZTE 24 6.9
TECNO 1 0.3
Other 38 10.9
Total 348 100.0
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This study has further revealed that 299 (94.9%) students owned mobile phones with Internet capabilities whilst 16 (5.1%) owned mobile phones without this capability. Similarly, 216 (96.4%) academic staff indicated that their mobile phones had Internet capabilities, and only 8 (3.6%) indicated that their mobile phones did not have this capability.
Students who owned more than one mobile phone were asked to indicate how many of them had Internet capabilities. Forty-eight 48 (49%) students stated that two of their mobile phones had this capability whilst 46 (46.9%) indicated that only one of their phones had Internet capabilities. Only 4 (4.1%) had three or more mobile phones that had Internet capabilities.
These findings are shown in Figure 5.5.
Majority of academic staff who owned more than one mobile phone 69 (59%) indicated that they owned two phones that had Internet capabilities. Additionally, 36 (30.8%) owned only one Internet-capable mobile phone whereas 12 (10.3%) owned three Internet-capable mobile phones. These findings that are captured in Figure 5.5 suggest that academic staff owned more phones with Internet capabilities than students.
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Figure 5. 5: Number of Internet-capable Mobile Phones for Respondents Who Owned More than One Mobile Phone (Students, n=98; Academic staff, n=117)
Source: Survey data, 2016
Internet capability is one of the important features of a smartphone, others being Wi-Fi capabilities, QWERTY keyboard (either physical or virtual), and touch screen (Song and Lee, 2012; Yu, 2012; Lippincott, 2010). Much as the study did not specifically find out whether the phones respondents owned were either smartphones or feature phones, this finding could point to a high prevalence rate of smartphones amongst the students and academic staff.
The technological context of the TOE Framework identifies technologies available both to the firm and the market place as critical to technological adoption. The fact that students and academic staff owned mobile phones, most of which had Internet capabilities, implies that libraries in this study could easily adopt the use of mobile phones in providing library and information services.
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The researcher carried out a Chi – square (χ2) cross-tabulation to determine whether age had an effect on mobile phone ownership. This was only conducted on data collected from academic staff because they had a wider age range (20 – Over 60) when compared to students. Findings presented in Table 5.7 indicate that although most of the academic staff 102 (45.5%) owned one mobile phone, single ownership was prevalent mainly amongst the 20 – 30 year olds 19 (61.3%) followed by those over the age of 60, 6 (50.0%) and least among those aged between 51-60, 6 (21.4%). Whilst dual mobile phone ownership was the norm amongst the 20-30 year olds and those over the age of 60, multiple mobile phone ownership was common amongst the rest of the age groups. Most of the academic staff in the 51-60 age bracket 19 (67.9%) owned two mobile phones but others reported owning three 2 (7.1%) or more than three 1 (3.6%) which was the highest number owned by any of the groups. Within the 41-50 year olds, those who owned two or three mobile phones 39 (53.4%) slightlyly outnumbered those who owned one mobile phone 34 (46.6%). Similarly, those who owned more than one mobile phone 43 (53.8%) outnumbered those who owned only one 37 (46.3%) within the 31 – 40 year old bracket. Despite the findings in Table 5.7 showing some noticeable differences in terms of mobile phone ownership amongst the various age groups, the findings were not backed by the Chi – square (χ2) correlation test that showed no statistically significant correlation between age and number of mobile phones owned, χ2 = 24.939, df 12, p = 0.015. This finding is at variance with the UTAUT model which identifies age to have a moderating effect on technology adoption and use.
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Table 5. 7: Cross-tabulation of age and number of mobile phones owned by academic staff (N=224)
Age range
How many mobile phones do you own?
Total
One Two Three More than three
20-30 19 12 0 0 31
61.3% 38.7% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0%
31-40 37 32 11 0 80
46.3% 40.0% 13.8% 0.0% 100.0%
41-50 34 27 12 0 73
46.6% 37.0% 16.4% 0.0% 100.0%
51-60 6 19 2 1 28
21.4% 67.9% 7.1% 3.6% 100.0%
Over 60 6 6 0 0 12
50.0% 50.0% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0%
Total 102 96 25 1 224
45.5% 42.9% 11.2% 0.4% 100.0%
Source: Survey data, 2016
A cross-tabulation of gender and number of mobile phones owned amongst the students revealed that there was a slightly higher percentage of males 140 (68.6%) that owned one mobile phone than females 75 (68.2%). On the contrary, more females 35 (31.8%) owned two mobile phones compared to males 55 (27.0%) but there were more males 9 (4.4%) that owned three or more mobile phones and no female in this category. These findings are further shown in Table 5.8. However, the Chi-square (χ2) test showed that there was no statistically significant correlation between gender and the number of mobile phone ownership, χ2 = 5.443, df=3, p=0.142.
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Table 5. 8: Cross-tabulation of Gender and Mobile Phone Ownership among Students (N=314)
Gender
How many mobile phones do you own?
Total
One Two Three More than three
Male 140 55 7 2 204
68.6% 27.0% 3.4% 1.0% 100.0%
Female 75 35 0 0 110
68.2% 31.8% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0%
Total 215 90 7 2 314
68.5% 28.7% 2.2% 0.6% 100.0%
Source: Survey data, 2016
Another Chi-square (χ2) cross tabulation of gender and number of mobile phones owned was conducted on data collected from academic staff. The findings showed that there were some percentage differences in terms of the number of mobile ownership between males and females. For instance, more males 80 (47.7%) owned only one mobile phone compared to females 22 (40.7%). However, a bigger percentage of females reported owning two 25 (46.3%) and three 7 (13.0%) mobile phones than males whereby findings indicated that 71 (41.8%) owned two mobile phones and 18 (10.6%) owned three mobile phones. Detailed findings are displayed in Table 5.9. The Chi-square test again showed that there was no statistically significant correlation between gender and the number of mobile phone ownership, χ2 = 1.080, df = 3, p = 0.782. Findings made in relation to mobile phone ownership and gender are contrary to the UTAUT model which indicates that gender has a moderating effect on technological adoption and usage.
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Table 5. 9: Cross-tabulation of Gender and Mobile Phone Ownership among Academic Staff (N=224)
Gender
How many mobile phones do you own?
Total
One Two Three More than three
Male 80 71 18 1 170
47.1% 41.8% 10.6% 0.6% 100.0%
Female 22 25 7 0 54
40.7% 46.3% 13.0% 0.0% 100.0%
Total 102 96 25 1 224
45.5% 42.9% 11.2% 0.4% 100.0%
Source: Survey data, 2016
The respondents were asked to indicate if at all they owned other mobile devices such as iPad or Galaxy tab besides mobile phone. Findings obtained from the student respondents show that 65 (21%) answered in the affirmative while 245 (79%) stated that they did not own such devices. Similarly, only a few academic staff 94 (42.7%) indicated that they owned such devices while the majority 126 (57.3%) pointed out that they did not own them.
Notwithstanding this, the level of ownership among academic staff, as was the case with mobile phones, was higher when compared to students.